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Recently InfoWorld did a special report on women and IT, called, "Why are Women Exiting IT Professions?" The article series discusses the advantages of gender diversity, the importance of getting girls interested at the K-12 level, and the traits of women leaders in IT. It also cites several reasons for why women are leaving IT – which I'll summarize and comment on here.

Living and spending my sabbatical in Sweden for more than six months has allowed me to gain a different perspective on a variety of issues in computer science, including those related to gender equity.

Instead of agonizing over why there aren't more women in IT, it might be more interesting and more fruitful to ask: Why are women so brilliant at IT? I ask the question because I know, have employed or interviewed, so many outstanding women in IT, and it always amazes me that no one has noticed how, or why, they are so stunningly successful.

Our fourth and last literature review for NCWIT, supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is now available. As in the other reviews, we examine what social science research tells us about the reasons for the small percentage of IT entrepreneurs who are women. For this review, we consider the influence that gender differences in social capital may have on IT entrepreneurship.

Women are much more likely than men to self-finance their business. Rather than go into debt or sell shares, women commonly use personal savings, earnings from the business, home equity loans, credit cards, and family loans to finance their business. In this third in our series of articles for NCWIT and the Kauffman Foundation on the under-representation of women entrepreneurs in the IT field, we survey the social science literature for what it says about the gendered difference in access to capital for entrepreneurs.

The second in our series of entrepreneurship reports is now online. On behalf of NCWIT and The Kauffman Foundation, we have been exploring what the social science literature tells us about why there are so few women entrepreneurs in the IT field. This review considers psychological factors.